A Different Approach to Fixing Failing Schools

            In this Education Week article, Garrison Walters (South Carolina Higher Education Foundation) says that when the 1983 A Nation at Risk report sounded the alarm that U.S. schools were succumbing to a rising tide of mediocrity, we called in our best management experts to fix the problem. “After a generation of tremendous effort and expense, we’re in many respects worse off than when we started,” says Walters. “The track record is so bad our experts are frantically rummaging at the bottom of the management toolbox to see what’s left. All they can find is ranking teachers and firing the lowest-scoring ones. This, plus endless testing, is the accountability agenda.”

            Such approaches are the exact opposite of the teachings of management guru W. Edwards Deming, who helped transform companies that had been churning out shoddy cars and appliances in the 1950s and 1960s. “Deming believed that data were important,” says Walters, “but didn’t worship numbers; rather, he emphasized that people’s attitudes were the key. He had complete contempt for management strategies that gave high priority to things like pruning bad workers and only evaluating quality at the end of the line (think high-stakes testing).”

            Rather than trying to “fix” schools through questionable management strategies, Walters believes we need to focus on a deeper problem: the attitudes some Americans have about schooling. “Studies of international education,” he says, “as well as those contrasting different ethnic groups, demonstrate that an educationally positive surrounding culture gives young students the conviction that learning is essential for success in life, as well as the belief that, with appropriate effort, everyone can succeed.”

            Walters cites a study in the United Kingdom that sought to explain why low-income white students had the lowest achievement of all subgroups. Of the ten major barriers to success, eight were psychological. These stood out:

-   Parental passivity or active discouragement: “Mum says it’s not worth it.”

-   Students not identifying with those who achieve in school: “I’m not like that, and I don’t know anyone like that.”

-   Geography, time, and cost barriers: “But that’s five miles away!” These barriers were particularly significant in areas in which students felt uncomfortable, such as pursuing further education.

“None of the predominantly psychological barriers identified by the British researchers is going to be overcome by more technology, more data, more tests, or a plan to crush teachers’ unions,” says Walters.

There are definite parallels in the U.S. – groups in which children are held back by discouraging adult messages, perennial denial of opportunity, a locally depressed economy, and few positive role models. In these circumstances, says Walters, “The gravity of an educationally negative surrounding culture will pull down all but the intrepid few.”

            Can this powerful gravitational pull be altered? “Fortunately, some researchers are getting out of the management box and demonstrating that attitudes are powerful factors in educational achievement,” says Walters – self-efficacy, character, mindset, grit, and resilience. But trying to change attitudes one student or one family at a time won’t work at scale. In the words of David Brooks, “Character is not developed individually. It is instilled by communities and transmitted by elders.”

            So how can a community’s ethos be changed? “Absent change in the surrounding culture, success at scale will remain elusive,” says Walters. For starters, we must “resist capitulating to poverty, even though it obviously is a powerful factor in educational culture.” We need more research on how some subgroups are doing well despite negative conditions, and we need to better understand how children’s attitudes are formed. Peer-to-peer communication works best, Walters believes. He cites his organization’s Know2 program in several communities in South Carolina, which trains neighborhood ambassadors who work to create a positive countywide education mindset.

 

“Dump Management ‘Science,’ and Change Learning Attitudes” by Garrison Walters in Education Week, January 28, 2015 (Vol. 34, #19, p. 25, 27), www.edweek.org